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From International Socialist Review, Vol.23 No.2, Spring 1962, pp. 34, 60–61.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Editor:
William F. Warde in his analysis of the draft program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the last issue of the International Socialist Review is definitely right in developing the thesis that even the attaining of its goals will not make the Soviet Union a country of abundance and the rule of one “monolithic” party is not compatible with the ideal of freedom.
Unfortunately, trying to stress his point, Warde falls into an extreme, painting a perverted, gloomy picture of Soviet life.
I fish at random some of the “pearls” contained in his article:
- “There are endless time-wasting queues at the state stores for everything from dried fish to bread.” Is this a picture of Russia during the civil war, famine, first five-year plan or of today? If this had been true now, we would have plenty of stories and pictures of our enterprising professional and “freelance” correspondents flocking into the USSR. As a matter of fact all of them state, to the contrary, that the stores are well stocked and the lines are an exception and not the rule.
- “The staple diet for the most urban families remains tea, cabbage soup and black bread.” This statement, apart from its nationalistic implication, is simply not true. You can’t say that about a country which exceeds even the United States in production of milk, butter and fish, (some even per capita). The diet of the Soviet population, being inferior to the richest country in the world, the USA, is more or less on the level of many advanced capitalist countries in Western Europe.
- “The quantity of most household conveniences are so restricted that even party members have put their names on waiting lists.” Would it not be more appropriate for a theoretical article to give some data about the ever rising production of the consumption items in the USSR (instead of this impressionistic image of general want), which would show that their volume exceeds the manner of “the more favored,” who according to Warde can buy those articles. Besides the information that there are special preferences on waiting lists for party members is a figment of imagination.
- It was shocking to find in this article “news” from Odessa that the longshoremen there went on strike against shipping butter to Cuba under the slogan “Cuba si, butter no!” To begin with, the whole “news” is a canard and it is amazing that a mature Marxist theoretician should fall for such a naive story concocted by malicious capitalist “journalists.” Especially, it is ill-becoming at the same time to accuse the Soviet Union of a lack of internationalism and in trying to help Cuba in its shortage of fats caused by U.S. embargo. Does comrade Warde rather prefer the USSR should help the Cuban revolution by sending to them flaming r-r-revolutionary manifestoes?
- “Thefts of state property occur at all grades of the social pyramid. Last year half the grain of the Ukraine remained unaccounted for!” The implication is that half of the Ukranian crop was stolen, which is, of course, sheer nonsense. The picture of the Soviet Union as a country of thieves is a common stock-in-trade of our capitalist “theoreticians” who want in this way to show the impossibility of socialism as being supposedly against human “nature.” To “generalize” in this way the thefts, which exist up to now in the USSR, instead of putting them in the right proportion, is to play the game of our capitalist adversaries.
- Warde put in quotation a supposed declaration of Khrushchev in connection with the Berlin crisis about “our fight for recognition of our grandeur” as a proof of his “chauvinism.” Does he not know that the quotation is taken not from Khrushchev’s mouth but from the gossip of Western correspondents covering some night affair in Kremlin who never tried to give the Russian equivalent of the French word used by the present leader of the Fifth Republic? Is it the task of a Marxist magazine to borrow the poisoned arrows from the armory of our class enemies?
- It is not correct also to attribute to Khrushchev the idea of surpassing even Stalin in his nationalistic arrogance of “socialism in one country” by “heralding the creation of communism in the same fatherland.” The reading of the draft program and Khrushchev’s speeches show that the new official Soviet line assuming the building of socialism already in the USSR (with which we can not agree) envisions the complete building of communism in all socialist countries simultaneously. This is rather a question of fine pure theory but Warde needs it to crown his own theory for condemning the “oligarchy” in the USSR for its “viciously reactionary and anti-socialist” character in “relation to the other states within the Soviet block.”
The old-time Stalinist press used to excel in exaggerations, distortions and fabrication of stories to the detriment of the Soviet Union and the whole international workers’ movement. Nowadays the capitalist press uses its best hacks to ridicule, deprecate and slander the Soviet Union in the pursuit of the cold-war policy. The duty of the
Marxist press consists not in imitating those “paragons” but in following its own course of presenting objectively the reality of the Soviet Union in the spirit of critical sympathy.
A. Binder
New York City
Editor:
My article disputed the basic premise of the new Russian Communist Party program that the Soviet Union, having already achieved socialism, is ready for the highest stage of communism. The collectivized planned economy has given the Soviet Union a dynamism superior to that of capitalism and directed it on the road to socialism. Contrary to Khrushchev’s contention, it has not arrived there. To do so, its powers of production, its means of consumption, and the freedoms enjoyed by the people would have to equal and surpass the levels reached by the most advanced capitalist countries. Despite the recent reforms, the unprecedented industrial and scientific progress registered and the immense potential, these goals have yet to be attained.
Soviet heavy industry is pressing hard upon Western Europe and the United States in many departments but economy lags considerably behind in light industry and agriculture. The new program and plans project goals to overcome these backwardnesses in the next 10 or 20 years – provided world peace is assured. Soviet economy can unquestionably move ahead at a swift pace. Meanwhile, however, the disproportions persist and the underdevelop-ment of light industry and agriculture has important social, economic and political effects on the rest of Soviet life. Within this framework, let me take up the specific criticisms of A. Binder.
1. Queues: Upon reconsideration, the sweeping statement comrade Binder objects to is exaggerated, misleading and should be corrected. The past 10 years have seen a considerable rise in Soviet living standards and these improvements are continuing. The Russian masses today enjoy better material conditions than at any time since the Revolution. But that is only one side of the situation.
Neither the quantity nor quality of the consumer goods available in the shops satisfy them or come close to the standards of Western Europe or North America. A competent observer, Harrison E. Salisbury, reported in the Feb. 5 New York Times, “there are periodic meat queues, milk shortages and egg famines.” These are evidences of the regime’s failure up to now to solve the agricultural problem. Many articles of common use are not regularly obtainable. The Soviet people suffer not only from inadequate production of consumers’ goods but from an inefficient, slovenly system of distribution. These are not the features of a socialist structure.
2. Diet: It is doubtful that the diet of the average Soviet citizen now equals that of Western Europe. Many observers say it does not match that of Czechoslovakia.
Moreover the menu of the masses cannot be judged solely from observations among the more prosperous layers in Moscow and Leningrad which are favored centers of distribution. The daily diet of tens of millions of low-paid workers in other places and of the peasants in the countryside must also be taken into consideration.
No slur was intended in taking black bread as a sign of a poor diet. It is nutritious, tasty and preferable, I believe, to the bleached white bread sold in the United States. However, both economists and the Russians themselves have traditionally viewed the availability of white wheat bread as an index and symbol of a higher status.
Prospects for immediate improvement in the food supply are darkened by the official plan fulfillment report for 1961 that discloses an absolute decline in meat production, a failure of the potato crop and a grain output ten million tons lower than in 1958.
3. Waiting-Lists: The Soviet people still have to wait for many things (from two to five years for apartments and autos) and the more privileged and prosperous usually get them first. Low-income workers often cannot afford many of those articles which are generally available. Workers in the Lekhashev Auto Factory in Moscow, who are among the best-paid in the Soviet Union, do not as a rule buy the autos they make.
The dream of the young is to own a motorcycle. Maurice Hindus tells in A House Without a Roof about a conversation with a “beatnik” who complained: “Here you have to be high-born, son of a minister or a factory director or an honored worker before you can buy one, even if you have the money.”
4. Odessa Strike: Since writing the article, some further information has been received on the 1961 strike in Odessa. According to La Verité des Travailleurs of Paris, the strike was not called against the shipment of butter to Cuba but to protest the victimization of two workers because they were Jewish. The difficulty of obtaining authentic information on these incidents testifies to the real atmosphere in the Soviet Union.
According to official mythology, strikes, like anti-Semitism, cannot happen or be justified in a “socialist” state. Yet the Odessa workers did strike. This was not reported or discussed in the press. The causes and circumstances cannot be checked and verified from outside. These workers must have had prolonged and serious grievances to risk an action forbidden by the government, whatever its immediate provocation. The Soviet regime could cut off the dissemination of false rumors at the source if it were open and above-board. But its policy of secrecy concerning such events permits the circulation of misrepresentations and misunderstandings which harm the Soviet Union’s reputation.
5. Thefts: Much of the information about embezzlements comes from Premier Khrushchev and the Soviet press which has published many reports of punishments for such practices. In order to fulfill statistical targets set by the plan – compulsory and often unrealistic – provincial and local party leaders as well as factory and collective farm managers deceived the state. Some falsified the origins of produce, slaughtered livestock to fill meat quotas, and bought butter in state shops presenting it as their own. Under conditions of scarcity and bureaucratic mismanagement, fixers, bribers, speculators, black-marketeers and other practitioners of illegal individual enrichment have flourished.
If a worker filches a piece of material or a tool from his plant which he needs and can’t get in the shops, or a needy peasant appropriates some grain for his own use from the collective crop, their conduct may be reprehensible; but the reasons for it must be understood. Such action is not a slander upon the Russian people nor an indictment of socialism. It is the fruit of backwardness, poverty, lack of goods, inequalities and the absence of democratic control by the masses over their government and economic life.
If thievery is not widespread in high and low places why has the government been impelled to revive and apply the death penalty for economic crimes? Are its leaders simply sadistic individuals or are they trying to cope with a grave social-economic problem by impermissible methods?
6. Khrushchev’s Nationalism: Like other statesmen, the Soviet Premier sometimes blurts out in private conversations opinions that are not reflected in official pronouncements. For example, at his villa on May 19, 1957 Khrushchev told the writers of Moscow that the Hungarian government did not have the sense to shoot a few of the insurgent writers of Budapest. Should the Russian writers refuse to toe the line and insist upon following this example, “my hand would not tremble,” Khrushchev said. This threat was omitted from the published report of his speech. But it is not necessary to rely upon Khrushchev’s informal utterances to prove his nationalist arrogance. These are discernible in his major policies.
Leave aside the Kremlin’s mistreatment of national minorities within the USSR or the countries of Eastern Europe such as Hungary, and simply look at the present attitude toward Albania. In what respects is it better than Stalin’s abuse of Yugoslavia after 1948? Hoxha’s regime is detestable. But it is not much worse than Ulbricht’s which Khrushchev upholds. The mighty Soviet regime is acting like a bully in using this small country as a whipping boy in its dispute with Peking.
7. Communism in One Country: The new program is not really based on the assumption that all the socialist countries will enter communism together but rather that the Soviet Union, having completed Socialism, will go forward at breakneck speed to the benefits of Communism before all the others.
Here is a key passage in Khrushchev’s speech to the 22nd Congress on this point: “The building of Communism in our country is an integral part of the creation of a Communist society in the entire Socialist community. The successful development of the world system of Socialism opens up prospects for the transition of the Socialist countries to Communism at more or less the same time, within one and the same historical epoch. The world system of capitalism comes under the law of uneven economic and political development, leading to an aggravation of contradictions and an intensification of the rivalry between States. The world Socialist system is developing in accordance with diametrically opposite laws. It is marked by the steady and planned growth of the economy of each country, by the more rapid development of States that were economically backv/ard under capitalism, and by all countries attaining the same general level of development.”
In this vague perspective Khrushchev is very circumspect about the specific time and place to be occupied by other Soviet-bloc countries who will go over to Communism “within the same historical period.” This is to be done in accord with his proposition that, unlike capitalism, which is subject to the law of uneven development, the world socialist system operates under the opposite law of even development. This assertion is false even in regard to the USSR itself where the development of heavy industry outstrips light industry and agriculture.
Planned economy does contain the potential of a balanced growth. But, singly or collectively, the workers states are still a considerable distance from its realization. The most flagrant case of unequal economic development involves the Soviet Union and China which today stand at opposite ends of the scale. These internal contradictions are not the faults of the governments but the inheritance of a backward past. But they cannot be overcome by denying their existence and importance under cover of an alleged new law of social development.
Khrushchev expects these uneven-nesses to be remedied through the accumulated economic successes of the Soviet Union, no matter what happens elsewhere in the meanwhile. Ironically, this perspective of building communism first and foremost within the USSR has already involved the accentuation rather than the diminution or elimination of the difficulties arising from these disparities.
This is most dramatically demonstrated by the growing split with China which has come so unexpectedly and remains incomprehensible to those Communists who rely upon official handouts for their information and explanations.
Despite assertions that no single country should have primacy, Khrushchev’s insistence that Soviet requirements remain paramount at all costs is a big factor behind the widening breach with China. This same point is made by Salisbury.
“In China they are living on 15 cents a day. Khrushchev talks about equalling the American standards of living in 20 years. Khrushchev’s goals are just nonsense to present-day China.”
They are, in fact, a deep-seated source of friction. Hard-pressed China is buying wheat from Canada and Australia. Why doesn’t it obtain that wheat from the Soviet Union? If the answer is that the Soviet Union does not have wheat to spare, then its lack of this vital food commodity further shows how far the country falls short of a socialist abundance and how important the resources of the world market can be.
But the trouble goes deeper than this. Just as Khrushchev doesn’t permit the Chinese to enter and settle in Siberia which needs labor for its development, so his program proposes to elevate his own realm into “communism” regardless of China’s needs. The Chinese leaders know and resent this.
Trotsky, following Marx and Lenin, long ago pointed out that these basic contradictions in the situation of the workers states can be overcome and their inherited unevennesses ironed out and eradicated only by taking the problems into the world arena for solution. Such a perspective and program would mean the pursuit of policies which facilitate the proletarian revolution in the highly industrialized capita ist nations. But this line runs counter to Khrushchev’s whole course of “peaceful coexistence,” not simply between nations witn opposing social-economic structures which is necessary and desirable, but between the imperialist rulers and their own working classes.
In his report to the 22nd Congress Khrushchev virtually blanks out any possibilities in the next period of victorious working class struggle for supreme power in the capitalist strongholds. This perspective, which was an integral and indispensable part of Lenin’s internationalism, is excluded from his outlook. In this respect he continues to follow in Stalin’s footsteps.
The fundamental economic and political problems of the existing workers states in this Space Age cannot be resolved without access to the world productive forces which can be fully opened up only through further extension of the socialist revolution.
Neither socialism nor communism can be built within the narrow boundaries of a single country – or even of a group of underdeveloped countries. That requires the mutual aid and planned cooperation of all the major producing countries.
* * *
I agree with A. Binder that the Marxist press should “present objectively the reality of the Soviet Union in a spirit of critical sympathy.” To do so, Marxists must see and show all the contradictory aspects of Soviet reality. For example, the highly educated Soviet people are avid readers, possibly excelling the public of any other great nation. But it is also true that their writers still chafe under heavy constraints and they are not able to freely buy and read foreign publications. Both sides must be understood.
This applies to the contrast between Stalin’s regime and that of his successor. Stalin’s was the rule of the “Big Lie.” Khrushchev’s is the regime of the “Half-truth.” His de-Stalinization measures are progressive and welcome, but limited and half-hearted. What the Soviet peop’e are demanding is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They want a thorough housecleaning.
They are not getting this from Khrushchev. That is why his partial, two-faced de-Stalinization will have to be consummated and completed by the phase of “de-Khrushchevization.” There are more radical and honest forces at work among the Soviet people today which are not only exerting powerful pressures upon Khrushchev but will go beyond him in democratizing the Soviet Union along genuinely Leninist lines.
William F. Warde
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